Media Arts Faculty

Ben Granoff

Ben Granoff has worked in New York City for twenty years as a visual storyteller with production houses, animation studios, advertising agencies, publishers and museums. Since his teenage years, he has been teaching cartooning for after-school programs, summer camps, charter schools, and social service agencies. He has been helping NYFA students bring their imaginations to life since 2017.

Bruce Buckley

Bruce attended Sheridan for college where he studied art fundamentals. His primary focus was photography, shooting both 35mm and 4×5. Commercial photography was exciting and he did lots of studio work and architectural photography.

After earning his degree, Bruce took a job with the Canadian government working with microfilm. There he discovered computers and became curious about the possibilities of using them to make art. After nine years there Bruce returned to school to study technical illustration.

In 1987 he went to NAB where he met fellow Canadian Steve Williams who was at the conference presenting with Alias. A phone call from ILM in 1993 brought Bruce to ILM. At ILM he went to work right away on films including; Casper, Dragonheart, and Congo helping to develop systems and tools to make the artist’s work move seamless. In 1995 Bruce was headhunted away by Disney to come work on Dinosaur. Bruce’s credits include; Atlantis: The Lost Empire, The Incredibles, Monster House, Beowulf, Scott Pilgrim, Tree of Life, John Carter, Prometheus, Fate of the Furious, Kong: Skull Island, and Deadpool 2, to name just a few.

Today Bruce teaches at the NY Film Academy and is a Freelance CG/VFX Supervisor.

Craig Caton Creative Director of Media Arts Department

Craig started out by doing makeup effects and animatronic puppets on movies such as Jurassic Park, Terminator 2, Tremors, and Ghostbusters. Moving into the digital era, he worked as a character technical director for Disney Feature Animation and for DreamWorks Animation as a layout artist. Working for Stan Winston, Craig supervised the creation of a network of Silicon Graphics workstations that would later become a core piece of the Digital Domain when Stan partnered with James Cameron and Scott Ross. He is credited as one of the eight co-founders of Digital Domain.

Frederic Durand

Frederic Durand graduated from the Ecole Nationale des Arts Decoratifs and studied for a year at NYC’s Cooper Union while earning his Master’s degree. He has worked on both animated and feature films in addition to his commercial work for over 20 years and has served at such companies as Disney Animation, Sony Imageworks, DreamWorks, Jim Henson’s Workshop, MPC, the Mill, and Digital Domain. He also co-founded Noroc Studio and is the lighting and shading supervisor at the Los Angeles company Mousetrappe. His prior film work includes Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Tomb Raider 1 and 2, SharkTales, Speed Racer, 2012, Beowulf, Monster House, Chicken Little, and many more.

Having authored a number of educational DVDs that instructed viewers in the subject of computer-generated illumination, Durand is an expert lighting artist employing a methodology that is as creative as it is technical and utilizes core elements of cinematography. In addition to teaching at NYFA, Durand also serves on the faculty the Gnomon School of Visual Effects, the Global Cinematography Institute, the Otis College of Design, and the University of Southern California.

Jim Hillin

Jim came to Los Angeles in 1979 as an artist, animator and musician. He began is career in computer graphics at a start-up in 1985 in Pasadena, CA. while also attending The Art Center College of Design. As an artist, he pushed to learn the engineering side of CGI, eating and breathing the new discipline.

In his fifth year in the business, Jim was chosen to be the Artistic Supervisor of CGI for “Beauty and the Beast” at Disney.

In 1993, he was hired as the Director of Digital Production for a new VFX shop, Digital Domain. He hired the first crew, created specs for the original software, including “Nuke” and worked on many motion pictures.

In 1995, Jim returned to Disney to head up a new live-action animated project, called ‘Dinosaur.’ After completing his work on the film, he worked as a Writer-Director at Disney Animation, pitching five animated features and two shorts in six months.

In 2000, Jim was elected by his peers into the Visual Effects Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In addition, Jim belongs to the Visual Effects Society, The Animation Guild and he has recently joined The Television Academy.

Matt Galuppo Chair of Media Arts Department

Matt has been working in entertainment for over 10 years beginning his career as an intern on Inception. From there he worked on a dozen or so films as a previs artist, including The Amazing Spider-Man II, Warcraft, Poltergeist, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. After that Matt began his directing career, making commercials for Fortune 500 companies including Toyota, Fiat, Netflix, and Nintendo. Spots, he produced, have garnered hundreds of millions of views and earned American Advertising Award, Muse Creative Award, among others. As a copywriter he has worked on Superbowl spots for brands like Verizon, Microsoft, and the NFL. Matt recently began his TV career selling animated pilots to COMEDY CENTRAL and SYFY.

More than all of this, Matt is most proud of the accomplishments of his students. In Matt’s 7 years of teaching animation his students have gone onto work on academy award winning teams, make effects for tent pole franchises, like Justice League and Star Wars, and even push the industry the forward helping create the industry standard software used by artists around the globe.

Tony Candelaria

Tony Candelaria began his career at Cafe FX in Santa Maria CA. as a CG modeler for feature films and television. In 2001 Tony worked at Warner Bros animation, developing and animating pilots. in 2005 he worked at Laika animation, making stop-motion animation for films, Coraline and Paranorman. Currently, he is creating puppets for Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio at Shadow Machine. Tony lives in Los Angeles.

Bill Einreinhofer

Created Emmy Award winning nonfiction content; from traditional documentaries and news reports, to narrative driven “real-life” stories and magazine-show segments. Developed and produced programming for PBS (“PBS NewsHour,” “INNOVATION,” “China Now”), ABC (“Good Morning America”), CBS (“60 Minutes”), Discovery (“Spacewalkers,” “Cathedrals of the Sky”) and HBO (“Diary of a Red Planet”).

Producer/Director/Writer/Host, “China: Frame by Frame,” one-hour 2023 documentary tracing his 30+ years of making stories in and about China. Seen on 250+ Public TV stations, and the PBS App. Historic and original footage gathered for this project is the basis of the Bill Einreinhofer China Archive, at the University of Southern California’s East Asian Library. Past co-production partners include the ABC (Australia), Globo (Brazil), CCTV (China), SMG (China), ZDF (Germany), NHK (Japan), KBS (Korea) and SVT (Sweden).

Veteran educator. Chair, NYFA Broadcast Journalism department 2013-2022. Prior adjunct appointments: Parsons School of Design, Rutgers University, Saint Peter’s University. Lectured at United Nations and East China Normal University.

Honors include three Emmy Awards; Judge – National News & Documentary Emmy Awards; Judge – International Emmy Awards; two CINE Golden Eagles; two Telly Awards; Gold Medal, New York Festivals; Golden Gate Award, San Francisco International Film Festival. Member, Directors Guild of America.

Evgenia Vlasova

Evgenia Vlasova is an instructor in Broadcast Journalism, Personal Journalism and Digital Editing. In addition, in 2020 she co-taught a three-week online Journalism Summer School for 22 early career Russian journalists, and a week-long in-person media training workshop for 20 accomplished TV professionals in Kazakhstan. (Both projects were funded by the U.S. State Department.) She co-produced and edited Shanghai 1937: Where World War II Began, a feature documentary which was broadcast by 200+ U.S. Public TV stations, as well as internationally. Prior to moving to New York, for seven years she co-anchored and co-produced an award winning morning show on Channel 6TV in Khabarovsk, Russia. She began her professional career with Radio Europa Plus.

Andrew Hall

Andrew Hall has more than 30 years of experience working with such diverse elements as moving liquids, smoke and vapor, pure light and floating bubbles. Hall owns and runs the School of Light darkroom facility in DTLA. He teaches all of NYFA’s alternative processes and darkroom classes at his beautiful space in the Reef building in downtown Los Angeles. His clients include Kodak, IBM, Honda, BBC, Castrol, Infiniti, Lexus, Nokia, Nestle, L’Oreal. Awards won include The Association of Photographers Award, Communication Arts Annual Award, Graphic Photography Annual (Gold) Award, International Photography Awards, and Polaroid European Final Art Awards. His publications include Global Corporate Identity and The Art of Saying Hello.

Baz Here

Baz Here is a queer fine art photographer and musician living in downtown Los Angeles. A multidisciplinary artist. Here is interested in the sound current and its effect on visual aesthetics. Through the use of self-portraiture, his work questions perceptions about race (white privilege specifically – White on White) and queer identity politics. His work has been exhibited at The Hive, Featured Resident Artist (DTLA) / The Getty Center, Pop-up Gallery/ Out There, Gallery 825 / Gallerie Sparta / LACDA / Gay Downtown LA Artwalk Pop-up Gallery / Beyond Baroque / Art Share LA Fall / Los Angeles LGBT Center Advocate and Gochis Galleries. His work is featured in The Advocate and The Cultural Weekly.

Chris Knight

Chris Knight was born in Wiesbaden, Germany and hardened by the sweaty, nearly chewable, humidity of Florida. He combines his unconditional love of art history with his conditional love of technology, topping it off with a flair for the cinematic and an uncompromising eye for detail.His work has appeared in or on Vogue, People, MSNBC, ABC, Oxygen, Ocean Drive, GQ and others.
Chris is the author of “The Dramatic Portrait,” a Profoto Legend of Light, and an instructor at Pratt Institute as well as the New York Film Academy.

David Mager Dean of Faculty Chair of Media Arts

Chair of Photography

Native New Yorker David Mager has worked as a commercial photographer for over 20 years, shooting mostly in the publishing market. Clients have included Disney, DK, Scholastic, Der Speigel, McGraw-Hill, Penguin, Time Out NY, Parents Magazine, and Park Place Magazine, to name a few.

David is an Adobe Certified Expert in Photoshop Lightroom and has received a Master’s of Professional Studies from the School of Visual Arts as well as a Bachelor of Fine Arts from New York University.

For the last 10 years, David has been teaching and sharing his industry experience with students at the New York Film Academy.

Jackie Neale

Jackie Neale is a hybrid photographic artist creating storytelling installations in mediums ranging from alternative processes to low-fidelity recordings. Her process relies on community immersion to depict honest interactions in underrecognized communities and serving as personal testimonials as oral histories. She is the former Online Features Imaging Director at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, completing over 300 storytelling projects over 15-plus years. She is also a published author, and undergraduate Photography Professor at Saint Joseph’s University and the New York Film Academy. Neale has completed residencies in New York City, Philadelphia, Texas, Mexico, Calabria and Milan, Italy.

John Tona

John Tona is a photographer and artist based in New York City. He uses photographic portraiture to investigate human nature and consciousness. His work employs strategies ranging from social-documentary, tableau, and reinterpretations of the portrait.

His most recent and ongoing project, (A)typical Typology, depicts pairs of people from each country of the world without cultural elements such as clothing, makeup, or other man-made products, leaving only the individual as the unique identifier. As a result, the lines of race and culture are de-emphasized, leaving us to consider the subjects more simply, as members of the human race.

In addition to publications in the Wall Street Journal and Forbes, his work has been exhibited at Art Space Artion, The Canson Gallery, and the Jeonju International Photo Festival in Seoul, South Korea as well as Art Basel in Miami Florida and Photoville in Brooklyn New York.

John is a graduate of the one-year photography conservatory at the New York Film Academy.

Jon Henry

Jon Henry is a visual artist working with photography and text. His work reflects on family, sociopolitical issues, grief, trauma, and healing within the African American community. Henry’s work has been published nationally and internationally and exhibited in numerous galleries, including Aperture Foundation, Smack Mellon, and BRIC, among others. Known foremost for the cultural activism in his work, his projects include studies of athletes from different sports and their representations.

He was recently named one of “The 30 New and Emerging Photographers in 2022” and TIME Magazine’s “NEXT 100” in 2021.  He was included in the Inaugural 2021 Silver List and was recently awarded the Arnold Newman Grant for New Directions in Photographic Portraiture.

Henry was named one of LensCulture’s “Emerging Artists” and won the Film Photo Prize for the Continuing Film Project sponsored by Kodak. His book, “Stranger Fruit,” published by Monolith Editions/Kris Graves Projects, is currently in its second edition.

Lane Barden

Lane Barden is an architecture photographer with a fine arts background. His client list includes major national and international firms such as A.C. Martin, Harley Ellis Devereaux, Atelier Jean Nouvel (Paris) Audi Bank of Beirut and Coop Himmelblau. His work is included in the collections of The Getty Research Institute at the Getty Center, The Houston Museum of Fine Arts, and The Los Angeles County Museum of Fine Arts.

Lane has taught at the Art Center College of Design and the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) in Los Angeles. In 2015 he was a guest lecturer at the Annenberg Space for Photography. He holds an M.A. and an M.F.A. from the University of New Mexico.

Linda Lewis

Linda Lewis received her degree from Cal State Fullerton. During a 25-year career as a commercial photographer, Linda has documented over 500 weddings, shot for dozens of artists throughout Southern California, and worked for a variety of corporate, editorial and university clients — including Toyota and USC — that have taken her to Cape Kennedy for a Space Shuttle launch and given her the opportunity to photograph five U.S. Presidents.

In addition to her work with the New York Film Academy Los Angeles, she has taught courses in media, photojournalism, wedding and public relations photography at Chaffey College for over 20 years, and given workshops at the Los Angeles Center of Photography and Brooks Institute.

Nancy Burson

Acclaimed artist/photographer Nancy Burson’s work is shown in museums and galleries internationally. “Seeing and Believing”, her traveling 2002 retrospective originating at the Grey Art Gallery, was nominated for Best Solo Museum Show of the Year in New York City by the International Association of Art Critics. She has served as a visiting professor at Harvard and was a member of the adjunct photography faculty at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts for five years.

Her work is included in museums worldwide including the MoMA, Metropolitan Museum, and the Whitney Museum in New York City, as well as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Center Georges Pompidou in Paris, the LA County Museum of Art, and the Getty Museum, MoMA (San Francisco), the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC, as well as many others. She has collaborated with Creative Time, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and Deutsche Bank in completing several important public art projects in NYC.

Naomi White

Naomi White is a feminist, artist, activist, and educator invested in ideas at the intersection of political ecology and photography. She is the winner of PDN’s Objects of Desire award and has exhibited throughout North America and Europe, including the Center for Creative Photography, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, GE World Headquarters; CAMP Gallery, Scope Miami, and Photo LA. She has been awarded residencies at Jentel Arts and Artist Residencies in Motherhood.

Her work has been published in PDN, The Brooklyn Rail, Uncertain States, and On Art & Aesthetics. White holds an MFA in Photography and Related Media from SVA in New York, and a BA in English Literature from San Francisco State.

Natasha Rudenko

Natasha Rudenko is a photographer and an educator, and has exhibited her work internationally. Her work was part of a few group shows in New York, Los Angeles, Moscow, Budapest and some others as well as a few annual publications of feminist and queer art, including Issues II and Femme Fotale Volume III Analog and Femme Fotale Volume IV Leafless.

In her work Rudenko interprets her personal experience as a human being. She addresses self-reflection and investigates the realm of her feelings and emotions. Through being honest and personal she aims to make people relate to the ideas explored in her work and provoke their own self-reflection. Rudenko also believes art education can change the world and make it a better place. MFA, New York Film Academy.

Saul Robbins

Saul Robbins is interested in the ways people interact within their surroundings and the psychological dynamics of intimacy. His photographs are motivated by observations of human behavior and personal experience, especially those related to loss, unity, failure, and the latent potential residing in traditional photographic materials and personal history. Robbins is best known for “Initial Intake”, which examines the empty chairs of Manhattan-based psychotherapy professionals from their clients’ perspective, and “How Can I Help? – An Artful Dialogue”, a pop-up office into which he invites strangers to speak with him about anything they wish for free, and in complete confidence.

Robbins’ work has been exhibited and published internationally. He received his MFA from Hunter College of the City University of New York, where he studied under Roy DeCarava and is Adjunct Professor of Photography at International Center of Photography, NYFA, and SVA. He also consults privately and leads Master Workshops about communication strategies and professional development. His work can be viewed at: www.saulrobbins.com and @Saul.Robbins on Instagram.

Silvi Naçi

MFA in Photography + Media, California Institute of the Arts; BFA in Fine Arts and Graphic Design, Suffolk University. Silvi Naçi works with performance, video, sculpture, photography, text, and installation. They studied at the Instituto Cultural de Oaxaca (Oaxaca, Mexico) and Studio Art Centers International and have exhibited works at Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art Project Space, NYC (2019); MAK Center, LA (2019); MoCA Geffen, LA (2019); Other Places Art Fair, LA (2019); and Greater LA MFA Exhibition, LA (2019); and is a recipient of the Tim Disney Excellence in Storytelling Prize (2019) and the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Travel Grant (2018). Naçi took part in Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art (Berlin, Germany) 2019, and Elsewhere Museum and Residency (Greensboro, NC) 2019, among other residencies. Born and raised in former communist Albania, Naçi‘s practice investigates gender and cultural identity, language and time, the body as subject/object, and the consequences of patriarchy. Working with traumatic memories from their childhood, Naçi investigate gender and cultural identity as it relates to exile, immigration, and citizenship.

Thomas Werner

Thomas is the author of the books The Business of Fine Art Photography, Routledge, New York, and The Fashion Image for Bloomsbury Publishing, London. A creative consultant, Thomas works one on one with students, creatives, businesses, cultural institutions, and not for profits helping them refine their communications, and achieve their goals in fashion and fine arts. He is a contributor to Adobe’s Lightroom Academy, an Editor at Large for IRKmagazine, a Paris based fashion and culture magazine and website, founder of Thomas Werner Projects Podcast, the Global Editorial Director at Les Loupes des Steppes Publishing, and past Photography Program Director at Parsons School of Design in New York. Werner also led a team developing a media and literacy web site and resource center in five languages, Spanish, French, Russian, Arabic and English for the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations/UNESCO.

He is the former owner of Thomas Werner Gallery in Manhattan’s Chelsea Art District, and a former National Board member and NY Chapter President for the American Society of Media Photographers. He has worked with the United States Department of State on cultural projects in Russia, and been a photography consultant for COACH and Rodale Publishing, among others. Thomaswernerprojects.com @Thomaswernerprojects

Andy Ashcraft

BA in Graphic Design, UCLA

Andy is the founder of Giantsdance Games. He has held game design positions at Sony Computer Entertainment of America (working on God of War and God of War II), Electronic Arts, THQ, Disney Mobile, Disney Consumer Products, and THQ.

David Fratto

Executive Producer, BBC Worldwide; Sr. Director of Development, Scholastic Inc.; Director of Development, Vivendi Universal Games, Executive Producer, Knowledge Adventure; Education: Harvard University, BA.

Dr. Shlomo Sher

Shlomo is a Philosophy professor and professional ethics workshop facilitator committed to encouraging critical and ethical self-reflection in his students. He as a passion for practical ethical issues, which he seeks to extend to others both in and out of the classroom. He began his development as an educator as a trainer at the USC Marshall School of Business’s groundbreaking Experiential Learning Center. From 2003-2009. There he facilitated workshops on topics such as organizational communication, group decision-making, power dynamics, and cultural sensitivity. In 2007 he was asked by the center to apply my ethics expertise to such workshops, and in the next two years developed several multimedia-driven business ethics training workshops that have since been used by MBAs, undergraduates, and even high school students. From 2009 to 2011, he was a Fellow at the USC Levan Institute of Humanities and Ethics, where he became involved in the Institute’s events and projects aimed at engaging USC’s students, faculty, and staff with a wide range of ethical issues. Central to his pedagogical approach is the recognition that every single person cares about ethical questions, though they may not realize this or may lack the education necessary to clearly articulate and critically evaluate their beliefs. I has appeared as speaker in a variety of venues including ABC’s Lost and Fox’s Fringe. Education: USC, PhD, University of Warwick, MA, UCLA, BA.

Glenn Storm

Glenn is a game designer and programmer with experience bringing many games to market, including Sonic The Hedgehog and Star Wars: The Clone Wars for the LeapFrog, Didj handheld console; which took Children’s Technology Review: Editor’s Choice Award in 2008. His game work draws upon ten years’ experience as an animator at Warner Brothers Feature Animation, Dreamworks Feature Animation, and other firms. During that time he worked on the films: The Iron Giant, Osmosis Jones and Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas.